A year on the Wear:It was when Everton's seventh went in that Niall Quinn's mind sped to the thought of an alternative career. After his playing days finished, Quinn had dabbled in media work for newspapers and television and as he shivered literally and metaphorically at Goodison Park last Saturday afternoon, an image of a warm studio came to him.
"I had a quick flash of whoever was doing the game on Sky," Quinn said, "Phil Thompson or whoever, on that programme with the earphones, shouting: 'My God, it's seven.' For an instant I thought to myself: 'Would it be better being down there doing that or sitting here taking this?' Instantly I thought I'd rather be here, with Sunderland, in this seat, even if they gave a million pounds to be down there. Because this is what it's about - you're at nothing in football if you're in it for the pats on the back.
"As a player I know my biggest achievement was coming back from two cruciate injuries, all those days in the gym on my own when others had given up on me.
"That sense of inner strength, that's what came flooding back to me on Saturday when the seventh goal went in. Rather than be doomed, shellshocked or feel like a rabbit in the lights, I walked across the road with my old manager, Howard Kendall, for a drink. I made no excuses, I stuck my chest out and said: 'Watch us next Saturday, boys'."
It was a bold call. But, six days on, Quinn was sticking to it, in fact Quinn is determined to stick in an industry famous for twisting. Derby County are the visitors to the Stadium of Light today having dismissed their manager Billy Davies on Monday.
Paul Jewell has come in, which means that six Premier League clubs have already changed their manager this season.
If Quinn has a message to Sunderland fans, it is that Wearside will not be following suit. Just in case some interpret his words as a dreaded vote of confidence from a chairman to his manager, it is not.
Roy Keane knows that, of course, but Sunderland fans, some of whom have used phrases such as "the honeymoon's over" this week with regard to Keane and Quinn, are requested to get back on side - sharpish. There was a gentle reminder that it is 15 months since Keane took charge of his first game, at Derby, 16 since Quinn was manager. "As this group, we've only been in the Premier League four months," Quinn said.
"The aim is unity. No team has ever performed by being disjointed. I was always a team player and to make an analogy, my strength was bringing other players into play. That is what I have to do as a chairman. I am going to be hugely supportive. It was my idea to get this thing together, I've been given full power to influence it and I feel bad because I don't think one poor result merits me speaking like this. But for future reference, people need to know this is a team effort.
"Sunderland must do that. We can't afford to lose our confidence as we have done in the past. If someone has a go at Roy Keane or a player or at Niall Quinn or the investors, then they need to realise they're having a go at all of us. We move as one and there is no one out there who can convince me otherwise. This club, from the time the uneasiness came in Peter Reid's reign, around 2001-02, when the highs of the two seventh-place finishes were beginning to be forgotten - to now, 2007-08 - has had a frightening level of instability.
"Rather than us coming in and joining the rat race and carrying on in a similar vein of chopping and changing, apportioning blame, scurrying for air, I'm of the opinion this club needs stability. We have a great young man in Roy, who's going to be great, and we can't fall into the trap in football now where everything depends on your next game. That is the culture now, and that's not great. There has to be long-termism, there has to be stability and balance. Especially at this club."
No desk was thumped, no air punched, but Quinn's desire for Sunderland not to act as they have in the recent past is unmistakable. He is conscious of "not underplaying Everton" because he knows "a gaping wound" was sustained, "though not a mortal one". But to wobble this week would have been a betrayal, unforgivable. This was no week for Quinn to turn off the mobile and he didn't. Fortunately for him, Keane and Sunderland, the men from the Drumaville met Quinn three days after Everton and offered renewed support.
"My experience of football counts for nothing if I join the rat race," he said. "If I start covering my back, blaming others, that's what football is full of. What I'm saying is that this thing can go three ways: it can be stagnant and we can barely be a Premiership club, or we can make progress and become a real part of things, or it can go the wrong way and we find ourselves back where we started.
"Where I am is: Roy is our number one choice, we are attempting to develop his career in tandem with the club and whatever way it goes, it goes with us united. If we don't stay united then I've wasted my time in football."
People may joke that Quinn could sell milk to cows if needs be, but the responsibility of intervening in Sunderland's downward journey and persuading Drumaville and Keane to come along rests daily with the 41 year-old. It is a serious enterprise - the finances alone are huge - and an unspoken risk is Quinn's reputation on Wearside. But ego went unmentioned yesterday; you could see why.
"The message from the investors is hugely supportive, hugely understanding," Quinn explained of this week's meeting. "None of them were born with silver spoons, they all worked and a few of them, a majority of them, laid blocks. Over here people were in the mines, for Irishmen of that generation it was building sites.
"They know about hard work, about tough times, they know what's happening here at Sunderland and they love being a part of it. They haven't lost the run of themselves, because they remember where they come from. When the building trade was very poor they remember who stuck with them. There is a realisation there that you get hard times. I'm not trying to underplay what happened at Everton, it could get a lot worse for us and we will really have to dig deep, but it's important for Sunderland fans to know that these people are behind us.
"The last meeting we had was after Everton, what came out of it was a message to Roy and the football club that the conviction is even greater now. It was a good time to have it, the real issues are there. The message is wholly supportive: through recruitment we will try to go and get what Roy needs.
"Billy Davies would have been crying out for that and it never seemed to come back. Chris Hutchings never got it, he lost Emile Heskey and Wigan, in theory, took the view that it was his fault. When Heskey was fit, Chris Hutchings looked a top manager. I think he even got manager of the month."
As of yesterday Sunderland had sold around 42,000 tickets for this afternoon - "One week after we lost 7-1, one major trophy since World War II, that's what Sunderland brings to the Premier League." But there will be plenty within that crowd experiencing anxiety. There has been no win in the last eight games.
Quinn, too, feels it. A three-word exercise to describe the season so far produced: "Educational. Reality. Enormity - there is excitement within that, and anxiety, when someone is coming in one-on-one with our 'keeper my heart is ticking more than anyone in the stadium. I'm no iceman. There's the last-minute goal against Spurs, Chopra hitting the bar against Newcastle. But then it goes and you have got to get on with it."
Suppressing thoughts of a TV studio, getting on with it has been Quinn's motto for the week and from here on in one suspects.
"Last week knocked the living daylights out of them," he said of supporters, "but as opinionated as they are all entitled to be, they know that when times are hard, that's not the time to split and break ranks. I don't think they will. They have had enough of uncertainty."
